Engineering Ethics

Michael Davis is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, at the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA.

• Contents: Introduction. Preliminaries: Defining 'engineer': how to do it and why it matters, Michael Davis; Are business ethics and engineering ethics members of the same family, Norman E. Bowie; Is engineering ethics just business ethics? What can empirical findings tell us?, Vivian Weil; Ethics in competitive bidding and contracting, Arthur Schwartz. Important Cases: The iron ring, Henry Petroski; The case of the 3 engineers vs. BART, G.D. Friedlander (1974); The aircraft brake scandal, Kermit Vandivier; Give Goodrich a break, John H. Fielder; Moral dilemmas in highway safety decisions, James I Taylor; The sealed beam case: engineering in the public and private interest, George P.E. Meese; What is Hamlet to McDonnell-Douglas or McDonnell-Douglas to Hamlet: DC-10?, Peter French; Representation and misrepresentation: Tufte and the Morton Thiokol engineers on the Challenger, Wade Robison, Roger Boisjoly, David Hoeker and Stefan Young; SDI: a violation of professional responsibility, David Lorge Parnas); Bhopal: an essay on moral responsibility and civic virtue, John Ladd; The bioengineer's obligation to patients, John Fielder; The 59 story crisis, Joe Morgenstern. Professional Responsibility: Ethics and the engineering profession, Morris Llewellyn Cooke; Collective and individual responsibility in engineering: some questions, John Ladd; Access to engineering services: rights and responsibilities of professionals and the public, Robert J. Baum); The public health, safety and welfare: an analysis of the social responsibility of engineers, Michael C. McFarland; Engineers who kill: professional ethics and the paramountcy of public safety, Kenneth Kipnis); Informed consent in engineering and medicine, Roland Schinzinger and Mike W. Martin; The social/professional responsibility of engineers, Deborah G. Johnson; Is idiot proof safe enough?, Louis L. Bucciarelli; Can engineers hold public interests paramount?, Taft H. Broome Jr; Thinking like an engineer: the place of a code of ethics in the practice of a profession, Michael Davis;Explaining disasters: the case for preventive ethics, Charles E. Harris. Professional Autonomy in Large Organizations: Moral blueprints, Samuel C. Florman); Ethical responsibilities of engineers in large organizations: the Pinto case, Richard T. DeGeorge; Collective responsibility and professional roles, Albert Flores and Deborah G. Johnson; Moral responsibility for engineers, Kenneth D. Alpern; Organizational loyalty, John H. Fielder; Some paradoxes of whistleblowing, Michael Davis; Personal integrity and accountability, Roger Boisjoly; Professional autonomy and organizational restraint: the case of engineers, Peter F. Meiksins and James M. Watson ; Professional autonomy: a framework for empirical research, Michael Davis; Technology and civil disobedience: why engineers have a special duty to obey the law, Eugene Schlossberger. Codes of Ethics and Professional Organization: The philosophy of codes of ethics, L.L. Fuller; Evolution of the American Society of Civil Engineers code of ethics, P. Aarne Vesilind; Codes of ethics and the moral education of engineers, Heinz Luegenbiehl; Professional action and the liabilities of professional organizations: ASME v. Hydrolevel Corp, Larry May; Role of engineering societies in controlling hazardous technology. Research and Teaching: Science- and engineering-related ethics and value studies: characteristics of an emerging field of research, Rachelle D. Hollander and Nicholas H. Steneck; Future directions in engineering ethics research: microethics, macroethics and the role of the professional societies, Joseph R. Herkert; The professional approach to engineering ethics: 5 research questions, Michael Davis; Moral issues in engineering: an engineering school instructional approach, Vivian M. Weil; Ethics as design: doing justice to ethical problems, Caroline Whitbeck; Engineering practice and engineering ethics, William T. Lynch and Ronald Kline; Ethics in the engineering curricula: topics, trends, and challenges for the future, H. Zandvoort, I. van der Poel, M. Brumsen. Application to the Concrete: 'The concrete sumo': exigent decision-making in engineering, Michael S. Pritchard; The concrete sumo, Taft H. Broome Jr (1999); Understanding 'the concrete sumo', Vivian Weil; Broome's 'concrete sumo', Michael S. Pritchard; Concrete ethics, Joseph R. Herkert; Wrestling with Broome's 'concrete sumo', Michael Davis; Reply to commentaries, Taft H. Broome Jr; Name index.